EU summit set to turn climate agenda upside down?

A sample of articles on decisions the EU may be taking on changing direction in energy policy, and why ..

EU summit set to turn climate agenda upside down | EurActiv:

Roger Pielke Jr. tweet

Europe’s plan to decarbonise its economy by 2050 could be turned on its head at a summit today (22 May) if EU heads of state and government sign off on measures prioritising industrial competitiveness over climate change in draft conclusions seen by EurActiv.
The draft text says that EU policy must ensure “competitive” energy prices, and declares it “crucial” that Europe diversify its energy supply and develop “indigenous energy resources” – a reference to renewable energies, but also coal, nuclear power and shale gas.
One high-profile German MEP Holger Krahmer (ALDE), hailed the end of “climate hysteria” in a jubilant press statement.

Or maybe not ...

A release from the Eurpean Parliament (referenced at the German Energy blog) 

 Energy mix: EU needs fixed target for renewables' share by 2030, MEPs say | European Parliament News

Oilsands and airplanes, pots and kettles: are climate agreements a waste of time?

Oilsands and airplanes, pots and kettles: are climate agreements a waste of time? | Canadian Energy Issues: 

“If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations [by reducing greenhouse gas pollution], I will.” Thus spake the U.S. president on February 12 of this year, in his 2013 state of the union speech. Only 77 days earlier, he had signed a bill protecting U.S. airlines from paying a carbon dioxide (CO2) emission fee for flying in European Union airspace. According to a Pew Center report, U.S. commercial airlines dumped around 150 million metric tons of CO2 into the air in 2005; that amount has been fairly constant since 1990 (see Table 1 on page 5). This is a rather glaring disconnect. The president blocked a climate action measure, and less than three months later told the world he wanted exactly those kinds of measures.
Unfortunately the disconnect went unmentioned in the mainstream press.
This is an important point, especially apropos of the current intense global PR campaign against oil from Canada’s oil sands. Oil sands CO2emissions in 2011 were roughly 62 million metric tons. So we have the U.S. president endlessly delaying, for allegedly environmental reasons, a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry Canadian oilsands crude to refineries in the U.S.. Meanwhile, he blocks an EU proposal that addresses an activity that puts nearly three times as much CO2 into the air.

Continue reading at Canadian Energy Issues

Mulcair mired in mud: NDP leader needs to flip-flop — again — or risk sinking in oilsands

Wherein the NDP communicates bad policy in pursuit of good soundbites...

Mulcair mired in mud: NDP leader needs to flip-flop — again — or risk sinking in oilsands | Columnists | Opinion | Toronto Sun:

...in Repentigny, Que., on Tuesday, Mulcair flip-flopped.
He is now against the idea of reversing Line 9B between North Westover, Ont., and Montreal, Que. Why? For environmental reasons.
“There is no system of environmental regulation in Canada, with Stephen Harper. So, people have to say ‘no’ to this (pipeline reversal) because you absolutely cannot trust them (the Conservatives) to produce a result that is safe for the environment,” Mulcair said. Partisan Mulcair does not trust Canada’s environmental regulation system anymore since we have a Conservative government. That is the latest excuse used by Mulcair to try to take the NDP out of the muck.
We are not talking about building a new pipeline in this specific case, just reversing the flow. How could it provoke more spills and environmental catastrophes when it goes from west to east than east to west?

The entire opinion article can be read at the Toronto Sun:

Hugging a Burning Tree

An article by  by Bjørn Lomborg on the Project Syndicate site

I've noted on my original content site that biomass is the 'renewable' that gets included when bragging about the share of total energy produced from renewables, but is excluded when listing renewable technologies.

Hugging a Burning Tree by Bjørn Lomborg - Project Syndicate:

...burning the willow releases 22 tons of CO2. Of course, all of that CO2 was soaked up from the atmosphere the year before; but, had we just left the barley where it was, it, too, would have soaked up quite a bit, lowering the reduction relative to coal to 20 tons. And, in a market system, almost all of the barley production simply moves to a previously unfarmed area. Clearing the existing biomass there emits an extra 16 tons of CO2 per year on average (and this is likely an underestimate).
So, instead of saving 30 tons, we save four tons at most. And this is the best-case scenario. Of the 12 production modes analyzed, two would reduce annual CO2 emissions by only two tons, while the other ten actually increase total emissions – up to 14 tons per year.
At the same time, we are paying a king’s ransom for biomass. Germany alone spends more than $3 billion annually, or $167 per ton of avoided CO2 emissions, which is more than 37 times the cost of carbon reductions in the European Union Emissions Trading System. And the estimate of avoided emissions ignores indirect land-use changes, making the likely real cost at least eight times higher.

Read Bjørn Lomborg's entire article at Project Syndicate:

An ill wind blows for Quebec taxpayers

Some thoughts - from this critic of  industrial wind in Ontario ....

Stop molly-coddling the Americans and fight for your exports to be considered every bit as green as solar, wind, etc.

Quebec should be arguing they have a green power system - reservoirs are spared when it is windy, and utilized when it is not - the American protectionist's claims that hydro projects over 100MW capacity are less 'green' are simply ridiculous.

Increased export contracts for 'green' energy still won't fully pay for these wealth transfer projects, but they aren't really electricity supply projects anyway ... 

An ill wind blows for Quebec taxpayers - The Globe and Mail:

Hydro-Québec is swimming in electricity surpluses. Just how big these surpluses are and how long this situation will last is a heated debate. The state-owned utility foresees surpluses until 2020, but some analysts expect they will last until 2027.

Hydro-Québec is already on the hook to buy highly priced electricity that it doesn’t need and selling it at a loss on export markets. The utility pegs the cost of the surpluses at $1.5-billion over the next seven years, an expense that will be passed on to Quebeckers through their electricity bills.

It is for this exact reason that the PQ government cancelled six small dam projects this winter – and that electricity is cheaper than the wind-produced electricity whose cost has fluctuated between 10 and 12.5 cents per kilowatt-hour before hookup costs. Hence the surprise with Ms. Marois’ decision to go ahead with not only 700 MW of wind power, but with an extra 100 MW on top.

The entire article can be read at The Globe and Mail:

An international conspiracy against pure research?

Conspiracy theory aside, here are  three similar stories  - from Canada, the U.K., and Australia

The Conservative love affair with targeted research | McLeans | May 8, 2013

Gary Goodyear’s quest for commercialization continues. The minister of state for science and technology joined John McDougall, the president of the National Research Council of Canada, to tell the country that its premier research institution would, from now on, focus on “commercial value”—not basic research. The idea is that Canadian companies could use more help with research and development, and the NRC is best placed to provide that support.
Each time the government announces such a shift, opposition critics and their allies lash out. They argue basic research produces innovation no one ever saw coming. Indeed, The Globe and Mail points to several such inventions produced by NRC researchers: the most accurate and stable atomic clock of its era, built in 1975; a “portable bomb sniffer,” built in the 1980s; and sophisticated computer animation, first developed in the 1960s. Yesterday, Kennedy Stewart took his turn pointing these things out to the government. The NDP’s science and technology critic wondered aloud during Question Period why Conservatives would “turn their back on important research.”

Across the world, Australia's budget confirmed many previously announced cuts to higher education/universities

Universities and students hit hard despite modest new spending | Universities Australia | May 14

Carbon pricing doesn’t work

Aldyen Donnelly is an economist writing on energy and environmental matters.

In the Financial Post, she offers a challenging read arguing the superiority of regulation to all existing attempts at carbon taxation.

Carbon pricing doesn’t work | FP Comment | Financial Post:

...the Canada 2020 background paper asserts that reducing Canadian greenhouse gas emissions (“GHGs”) and “pricing carbon” through government taxation are one and the same thing. They are not.
Interested and objective researchers can review fairly comprehensive datasets for over 120 developing nation pollution pricing policy precedents going back to 1978. Roughly one-third of these are “cap and trade”-type measures, while the rest are more direct consumption, production tax and/or tariff measures or measures that combine direct taxation and cap and trade.
Not one of the pollution pricing precedents can reasonably be described as effective...

News might be bad for completing the entire Keystone XL, and good for TransCanada

Some excerpts from recent articles to indicate why much of the Keystone pipeline might get built regardless of the decisions of a protectionist U.S. government

The U.S. Has Much, Much More Gas and Oil Than We Thought | National Journal

The United States has double the amount of oil and three times the amount of natural gas than previously thought, stored deep under the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana, according to new data the Obama administration released Tuesday.
In announcing the new data in a conference call, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell also said the administration will release within weeks draft rules to regulate hydraulic fracturing, technology that has come under scrutiny for its environmental impact but that is essential to developing all of this energy.
“These world-class formations contain even more energy-resource potential than previously understood, which is important information as we continue to reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign sources of oil,” Jewell said in a statement. 

Prosperous play's new oil estimates could influence pipeline plans | E & E Publishing, LLC

The main section of the new Keystone XL line that TransCanada wants to build would extend from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Neb. The southernmost portion is under construction now, a line running from oil storage facilities in Cushing, Okla., to Nederland, Texas, with an extension to Houston and its Gulf refineries.

Germany to keep Gas-fired power plants open by paying the fixed costs

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, in Electricity Sector Lessons from Ontario and Germany, Germany has now started the next round of increases in electricity pricing by moving to pay the fixed costs at 2 modern natural gas generators slated for closure by their owners due to an electricity system that made their profitability as merchant plants unlikely.

Irsching 4 and 5 Operators Agree with Tennet and BNetzA Not to Close Down Plants for Grid Security Reasons « German Energy Blog:

The operators of the Irsching 4 and 5 agreed with Tennet TSO GmbH not to close down the highly efficient but presently unprofitable gas-fired power plant units near Ingolstadt within the next three years. The units were needed to secure grid stability and the security of supply, and would continue to be operated to allow Tennet to resort to so-called redispatch measures if necessary, Tennet said. E.ON will receive the fixed costs for the power ...

The Irsching 4 and 5 are modern highly efficient combined cycle power plants. With a capacity of 569 MW, unit 4 (Ulrich Hartmann unit) reaches 60.4% efficiency, the highest efficiency worldwide. Unit 5 with a gross output of 860 MW reaches an efficiency of 59.7%. Yet it was not possible to operate the plants profitably in the recent past, as the growing renewable power plant output in Germany has to be purchased and transmitted with priority by the grid operators ...

Read the entire article at the German Energy Blog: 

Environmentalists Go Pro-Nuclear in 'Pandora's Promise' Trailer Premiere

Video: Environmentalists Go Pro-Nuclear in 'Pandora's Promise' Trailer Premiere | Rolling Stone:

Pandora's Promise examines the issue from the perspective of key environmentalists on both sides of the issue, starting with the writer Stewart Brand, who asks, "Can you be an environmentalist and be pro-nuclear? In light of climate change, can you be an environmentalist and not be pro-nuclear?" Stone admits that accepting that nuclear energy could be a viable power source was a struggle for him as well. "It's no easy thing for me to have come to the conclusion that the rapid deployment of nuclear power is now the greatest hope we have for saving us from an environmental catastrophe," he told Rolling Stone.

More text at Rolling Stone: